Codex Sinaiticus as an E-Book

[kikar]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Almost of the modern translations have consulted this and the other two ancient manuscripts and incorporated them into their documents. Will all the fuss for eBooks of this document how many of you can really read 4th century Greek? (not modern Greek) This is not a book to read, it is a manuscript to study if you have the background to do it.

Dale

I am one of those who can read Koine Greek. I love the fact that this treasure has been made available for all to see and study I would love to have this on my Sony and Kindle to have with me to peruse offline at my leisure. As well as the Codex Leningradensis and Codex Vaticanus. It would be nice to have the original koine greek as well as translations made available so everyone could not just study but read and enjoy a bit of history. Heck I would love to have as many historical documents digitized as possible so the many have access to what once was, and to some extent still is, the domain of a few.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by kikar

I am one of those who can read Koine Greek. I love the fact that this treasure has been made available for all to see and study I would love to have this on my Sony and Kindle to have with me to peruse offline at my leisure. As well as the Codex Leningradensis and Codex Vaticanus. It would be nice to have the original koine greek as well as translations made available so everyone could not just study but read and enjoy a bit of history. Heck I would love to have as many historical documents digitized as possible so the many have access to what once was, and to some extent still is, the domain of a few.

I suppose you could copy the pages from the web site and make your own book. Take a look. All uppercase, no spaces between words, old words that no one knows for sure what they mean. It is not likely to have mass appeal. You can get original language versions using Bible programs that provide much of what you want but of course not everything exactly. Having the electronic images is the best you can do. The alphabet isn't even drawn exactly the same way so fonts are useless.

Dale

[griffonwing]

So then the best format would be pdf then. Or, alternatively, you could use cbr or cbz, since these are simply archived images.

[Patricia]

I would be tempted to save each page as an image, owing to the non-standard fonts etc.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Almost of the modern translations have consulted this and the other two ancient manuscripts and incorporated them into their documents. Will all the fuss for eBooks of this document how many of you can really read 4th century Greek? (not modern Greek) This is not a book to read, it is a manuscript to study if you have the background to do it.

Dale

I can read it, as can many others. Koine Greek is a simple language to learn; the NT uses a small vocabulary and the gospels especially are deliberately straightforward language. There's really little reason not to learn it if it interests you to do so. You can pick up the basics in a few weeks.

BTW, which three "ancient manuscripts" are you specifically referring to? This one, the Codex Vaticanus (I assume?), and what else? There are at least two other "complete" NTs from the 5th century, and literally hundreds of more fragmentary documents. If you get a decent Greek NT (the "standard" one used by pretty much all scholars is the "UBS4" one), it will show all the variants and tell you which manuscripts contain what. There are more variations than there are words in the NT, as a matter of interest!

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I can read it, as can many others. Koine Greek is a simple language to learn; the NT uses a small vocabulary and the gospels especially are deliberately straightforward language. There's really little reason not to learn it if it interests you to do so. You can pick up the basics in a few weeks.

BTW, which three "ancient manuscripts" are you specifically referring to? This one, the Codex Vaticanus (I assume?), and what else? There are at least two other "complete" NTs from the 5th century, and literally hundreds of more fragmentary documents. If you get a decent Greek NT (the "standard" one used by pretty much all scholars is the "UBS4" one), it will show all the variants and tell you which manuscripts contain what. There are more variations than there are words in the NT, as a matter of interest!

I am sure you can read the words assuming the meaning hasn't changed in the intervening time and you can separate them for the next word. It is tricky of course.

Here is a quote from Smith's dictionary.

(1) the Alexandrian (codex Alexandrinus, marked A), so named because it was found in Alexandria in Egypt, in 1628. It date back to a.d. 350, and is now in the British Museum.
(2) The Vatican (codex Vaticanus, B), named from the Vatican library at Rome, where it is kept. Its date is a.d. 300 to 325.
(3) The Sinaitic (codex Sinaiticus) so called from the convent of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, there it was discovered by or Tichendorf in 1844. It is now at St. Petersburg Russia. This is one of the earliest best of all the manuscripts.
— Smith's Bible Dictionary

The current locations may have changed. There are many more of the New testament but these are mostly complete Bibles of both old and new. Note that none are in Hebrew, the oldest Hebrew we have is no older than the tenth century.

Dale

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Here is a quote from Smith's dictionary.

(1) the Alexandrian (codex Alexandrinus, marked A), so named because it was found in Alexandria in Egypt, in 1628. It date back to a.d. 350, and is now in the British Museum.
(2) The Vatican (codex Vaticanus, B), named from the Vatican library at Rome, where it is kept. Its date is a.d. 300 to 325.
(3) The Sinaitic (codex Sinaiticus) so called from the convent of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, there it was discovered by or Tichendorf in 1844. It is now at St. Petersburg Russia. This is one of the earliest best of all the manuscripts.
— Smith's Bible Dictionary

The other one generally included in the list of major ancient sources is a manuscript called the "Ephraemi Rescriptus", which is in the Louvre in Paris. It's believed to be roughly contemporary with the Alexandrinus.

[DaleDe]

It is worth noting that none of these versions were available to the King James translators.

Dale

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

It is worth noting that none of these versions were available to the King James translators.

Dale

That's right. We know now hugely more about the ancient languages than were known in the 17th century, and the KJV is an rather poor translation, by modern standards. It is undoubtedly a great work of English literature in its own right but, as a translation of the Bible, it's really not very satisfactory.

[Gideon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I can read it, as can many others. Koine Greek is a simple language to learn; the NT uses a small vocabulary and the gospels especially are deliberately straightforward language. There's really little reason not to learn it if it interests you to do so. You can pick up the basics in a few weeks.-

You just made me feel a little less worried about learning Koine Greek at Seminary in a few years.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Gideon

You just made me feel a little less worried about learning Koine Greek at Seminary in a few years.

Any online resources you can suggest, Harry, for learning Koine Greek?

- Ahi

[HarryT]

I'm afraid not, off the top of my head. I actually learned classical Greek, after which Koine is a breeze. Koine ("Common") Greek was the "universal language" of the Hellenic world from Persia in the East as far as Italy in the West, and was a deliberately simplified version of the language, so that pretty much everybody in the 1st century AD Mediterranean world, no matter what their native language, spoke it as a second language and could understand one another.

There are loads of good books on it. Do an Amazon search for "New Testament Greek".

[Patricia]

Try the links at the New Testament Gateway:
http://www.ntgateway.com/greek-ntgat...stament-greek/

[HarryT]

Looks like a good site. Thanks for the link, Patricia.